Maple sugarer aims for "best spirits in the world"

David Howe of Elmbrook Farm in Fairfield, creator of Literary Dog and Rail Dog spirits made from 100% maple, talks about the years it took to come up with "a knock out."
RYAN MERCER/FREE PRESS

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For the last six years, David Howe has chased perfection. After countless hours of trial, error, and innovation of his own unique system, Howe has created a unique spirit his distills at his farm in East Fairfield using maple sap from his sugarbush.(Photo11: RYAN MERCER/FREE PRESS)Buy Photo

EAST FAIRFIELD – David Howe was working in finance in London two decades ago, but his interest was elsewhere: maple trees in Vermont. He had his eye on a derelict farm in Franklin County, 532 acres, with a sugarbush.

A transfer from London to Tokyo moved Howe and his wife, Lisa Howe, in precisely the wrong direction. Away from Vermont.

Nonetheless, the couple finalized the deal on the farm from Japan and in a few years quit their jobs in business and moved from Tokyo to East Fairfield. Elm Brook Farm is named for the brook that runs through it, but an old maple tree has come to represent the farm's primary activity.

The tree on the edge of the woods, untapped, is the oldest one on the farm, Howe says. It dates to the American Revolution and surrounded by a sugarbush of some 12,000 tapped trees. Their sap these days is running down hill (and under ground) into a pump house.

After the sap undergoes a concentrating process called reverse-osmosis, a portion of it makes its way back up the hill, this time in a tank on the back of a Kubota. Howe drives it to a building behind his house, one kept secure by keypad lock. Inside is a distillery he designed and built. The space is part chemistry lab, part clubhouse.

Howe, 56, makes two kinds of spirits from maple sap, a process that took about half a dozen years to figure out, he said.

"I'm an old man," Howe said. "I'm a slow learner."

Howe makes vodka from maple sap, called Literary Dog, with creamy-butterscotch undertones. The vodka is named for the four dogs that walk the woods with Howe: Irving, King, Rowling and Annie (Proulx).

He also distills a brown liquor, one not easily classified. Howe describes it as similar to cognac, and suggests drinking it after dinner. Warm the glass in your hands for 20 minutes before drinking, and sip it slowly. The spirit seems, as well, bourbon-like, smooth and fiery with a hint of maple. Ritual aside, it is a glowing cocktail, straight-up, after a walk in snowy woods.

The maple spirit, 100 proof, is barrel-aged with a farm product in the barrel that Howe won't disclose. It's called Rail Dog.

"It gets concentrated to a secret ratio," Howe said. "That's how the flavors are formed. If you're going to use maple, you better have a good reason for using it because it's so expensive."

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Barrels age one of two of David Howe’s concoctions. Rail Dog, a spirit made from maple sap that might remind some people of cognac or even scotch whiskey, but with a distinct hint of maple syrup.(Photo11: RYAN MERCER/FREE PRESS)

'The frontier of spirits'

The vodka costs about $55 a bottle, Rail Dog $94. (Both are stocked at Beverage Warehouse in Winooski.) A shot of Rail Dog at Hen of the Wood in Burlington is $30. Howe's products are available at Juniper at Hotel Vermont, where Rail Dog is $29 for a shot, Literary Dog $13.50.

"Maple is the frontier of spirits. It's unique to this place on earth," Howe said. "I want to make the best spirits in the world. That's no exageration."

The maple spirits have developed a following through the Burlington Farmers Market, where Howe says people like to hear the story behind the booze.

The owner of a Victorian inn in Fort Madison, Iowa, Lori Illner, visits Burlington because her son is a student at Champlain College. After tasting Howe's spirits at the farmers market, she arranged to visit the farm and distillery. Illner made room for a case in her private plane.

"They are just fascinated by it," she said of inn patrons. "They love the story that it's distilled from maple sap and they're floored by how smooth it is."

Bart Mosley, a Stamford, Conn.-based entrepreneur, buys a case of Literary Dog every few months on visits to Vermont.

"It's become our vodka of choice," said Mosley, developer of an app called Thirstie, for on-demand liquor delivery.

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Rail Dog, a brown liquor, one not easily classified. Distiller David Howe describes it as similar to cognac, and suggests drinking it after dinner. Warm the glass in your hands for 20 minutes before drinking, and sip it slowly, Howe says.(Photo11: RYAN MERCER/FREE PRESS)

It's a sipping vodka, he said, and in that sense is "more akin to fine bourbon or Scotch." Mosley recommends it on the rocks with a twist of lemon.

"It kind of plays the same role as a martini, but doesn't need the vermouth," Mosley said. Paying about $50 a bottle "for something of that quality is really quite reasonable," he said.

Howe produces about 1,000 bottles a year of each product. The vodka is ready 10 months after he taps his trees, Rail Dog takes about three years. Each bottle of booze has the equivalent of a quart maple syrup in it, Howe said.

Doug Paine, executive chef at Hotel Vermont, said by email that he likes Rail Dog, a lot.

"I will say I would love to see more of this type of spirit," Paine wrote. "Truly Vermont. They aren't trying to copy or emulate any other style."

David Howe heads into his sugarbush at Elm Brook Farm in East Fairfield where his distills two unique spirits, Literary Dog and Rail Dog, that are made from maple sap.(Photo11: RYAN MERCER/FREE PRESS)

Other Vermont liquor-makers use maple sap in their products, whether distilling or for flavoring and sweetening.

The first person in Vermont to distill spirits from maple sap (commercially) is thought to be Duncan Holaday, who started in 1998. He tapped maple trees on his Barnet land and made vodka from the sap.

These days at his distillery, Dunc's Mill, the 70-year-old Holaday makes maple rum from organic cane sugar. He flavors the rum with maple syrup.

"People have been experimenting with these things for a long time," Holaday said. He traveled to Louisville, Kentucky this week to deliver at the American Distilling Institute on making spirits from scratch.

Holaday sold his first liquor company, Vermont Spirits, and it is now based in Quechee. Vermont Spirits continues to distill vodka from concentrated maple sap, a product bottled under the name Vermont Gold.

At Elm Brook Farm, Howe says the "brains of the operation" is a boiler he fashioned from a bulk tank and other equipment usually used for dairying. The copper pipe that extends from the contraption (the fractionating reflux column), by which liquids and gases are separated, is custom designed by Howe in a manner that he A.) won't reveal and B.) says is crucial to the flavor profile.

"This does the work," Howe said. "I built this one to make high-end spirits. It allows me to ultra-fine flavor compound separations. I can separate to a really fine degree, and with Rail Dog I can leave in lots of flavors."

The wood-paneled distillery, constructed from wood harvested at the farm, has the look and feel of being inside a barrel, Lisa Howe said. "Everything in here comes out of David's head," she said of her husband.

Lisa Howe works at Smugglers Notch Resort, which is owned by her father, William Stritzler. She said she prefers dark spirits, in particular Scotch, but was happily "turned on to" a new class of vodka waiting for her husband's maple spirits to age.

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David Howe heads into his sugarbush at Elm Brook Farm in East Fairfield.(Photo11: RYAN MERCER/FREE PRESS)

The value of puttering

David Howe grew up in northern Minnesota on a defunct dairy farm. He studied chemical engineering at the University of North Dakota and went to graduate school at Cornell, where he got his MBA.

He fell in love with Vermont when he was a graduate student at Cornell and he traveled here to compete in ski competitions.

After moving overseas to work in finance, he decided that when he returned to the United States, he would make Vermont his home.

Howe met his future wife in Denmark. She shared his vision of a Vermont future.

"We both loved Vermont," he said. "And that's kind of how we fell in love." They quit their overseas jobs and moved to Vermont to raise their two daughters, now both in high school.

Howe said he looked at a 100 farms in Vermont before he found Elm Brook. He loves living in an agricultural town and calls Elm Brook Farm a "diamond in the rough." If you like living in the middle of nowhere, he said, Elm Brook Farm is the place.

"I just saw it said, 'Man, there's something here,' " Howe said. "Before I go, I want the front of the farm to be a natural wildlife refuge."

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David Howe checks a tap with a leak during a tour of his sugarbush at Elm Brook Farm in East Fairfield where he distills two uniquely Vermont spirits, Literary Dog and Rail Dog, made from maple sap.(Photo11: RYAN MERCER/FREE PRESS)

Farmers choose between raising proteins and raising sugars, Howe said. He doesn't like manure so he decided to focus on sugar. His plan was to grow grapes and make wine. But the wine he produced was mediocre, Howe said.

He shifted his focus to Vermont's sugar industry — maple sap — and built a distillery to produce spirits from sap collected from his trees.

"My favorite place to be is in the woods," Howe said. "Even with a chain saw, I'm happy. And I like being in the lab (distillery) here. I like being outside, and some days I like research and development inside."

Last winter's ice storm and the damage it wrought in his woods had Howe wondering if he'd be able to carry on — simple cleaning up the debris was a major undertaking.

But the wreckage led to a partnership with sugar-makers from Cambridge, Thunder Basin Maple Works, that has been a tremendous help, Howe said.

"My favorite thing to do is putter," he said. "That's highly underrated. I clean up. I make things look better. I fix things."

Distiller David Howe left his job in finance to buy a farm in East Fairfield where he distills maple sap into booze.(Photo11: RYAN MERCER/FREE PRESS)

Liquor business growing in Vermont

The state of Vermont is both licensor and customer of Vermont distillers, and business is on the rise.

Sales of Vermont spirits at state liquor stores increased from $533,448 to $1,766,265 from 2010 to 2013, according to information from Jeremy Elliott of Smugglers Notch Distillery. Elliott is president of the Distilled Spirits Council of Vermont.

There are 19 licensed distillers in Vermont, 15 of which sell their products through the state, according to the Vermont Department of Liquor Control. Some don't yet have a product for sale, another sells only on premises, said Marcia Gardner, director of sales and marketing at the Department of Liquor Control.

In order to get licensed by the state, a distillery must first submit an application with the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, a federal organization. After a permit has been issued, the distiller can apply to the state Department of Liquor Control for licensing, said Bill Goggins, the department's director of education, licensing and enforcement.